Marriage {Maintenance}

Recently I came across a blog entry written by a woman who communicated so effectively the mutual fear couples often experience related to a husband’s spiritual leadership and authority.   She nails it!  So this week I’m honored to share a portion of her blog, with her permission.  Thank you, Bekka!

~Emerson

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Maintenance

I've been a little quiet this week because Tim has been home. After four weeks working at a job site more than 14 hours drive away, I tried to take advantage of as many moments as possible with him…I’d asked Tim to book the time off to include the weekend because this weekend, a combined effort of our local churches led to the hosting of a Love & Respect video seminar in our community centre.

At first he was all like “Do we really need to go to this thing?” to which my reply was that we didn’t really need to go, in the sense that we’re not in any kind of crisis stage of our marriage. However, I posed the issue of maintenance. As my friend recently pinned on Pinterest, the grass is greener where you water it.

Session One began Friday evening, and it went over well. It was humorous and enjoyable (I particularly liked the statement “There’re no vacancies in the Trinity”) and we went home, both of us thinking “Great stuff, but we already knew that.”

Then began Session Two on Saturday afternoon, followed closely by Session Three. And that’s where we realized what was missing in our marriage.

Dr. Eggerichs made a comment much to the effect that most Christian wives are looking to their husbands to be the spiritual leaders of their families. They expect their husbands to be the representation of Christ in their households. I was sitting there thinking, “Wow, ain’t that the truth of it! That’s exactly what I want of my husband.”

But with one little word, I realized where I had messed this up. In the middle of the acronym “CHAIRS”, is the word “Authority”. Dr. Eggerichs began to describe our spiritual relationship to the letter. Essentially, the wife looks to the husband for leadership, but she is fearful and apprehensive and so she asks questions and looks for reassurance. The husband interprets this as trying to take control and wear the pants of the relationship and so backs off or responds negatively to the wife and a cycle begins. I believe Dr. Eggerichs fondly refers to this as the “Crazy Cycle” – which comes in part from the definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.”

And that’s where our crazy cycle began, with authority. I wasn’t letting my husband have any because I was allowing my fear to intervene. And what was I afraid of? I was afraid that my husband would stretch me.

Tim is a self-taught philosopher and theologian. He is incredibly intelligent…So I was worried my husband… would stretch me further than I thought I was ready to be stretched.

When I confessed this to my husband on our drive home and asked for his forgiveness, I was once again rocked to my core.

That same segment about spiritual leadership had impacted him as well. And he confessed that he was afraid. He was afraid that I would somehow crush him if he had taken on that role. He never thought he was afraid of anything – this is the ironworker who climbs 150 feet into the air and sends me a text message to let me know he loves me, because 150 feet above ground is the only place his cell phone would get a signal.

Last night, as we were lying in bed, God gave me an image of my husband walking up the steps of a raised dais to a throne. On his shoulders was a black mantle of fear, worry, apprehension and something else I couldn't place. As he walked up the steps, his mantle fell off and he was able to sit on the throne. And then he was crowned.

I’m excited for my husband to take his rightful place as the spiritual leader of our family, where I have so desperately longed for him to be, yet have unknowingly set up road blocks all these years. I’m excited to see what happens next.

I give the Love & Respect seminar an A. I highly recommend it to anyone who is wondering just what seems to be missing from their marriage, or who feels like they’re just going through the “Crazy Cycle” all the time, or even for people who think they've got it all together right now and just want to go for some encouragement and maintenance. 

           

Why Stick to the Vow?

Do you recall your wedding vows?

The pastor asked you, “Will you have this man to be your husband (this woman to be your wife), to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love, comfort, honor, and keep___ in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful as long as you both shall live?” You answered, “I will.”

You then turned toward each other and vowed, “In the Name of God, I __________ take you, __________ to be my husband/wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”

Why did you make these vows? And, perhaps more importantly, why stick to these vows? Maggie Gallagher and Linda J. Waite, authors of The Case for Marriage, reviewed the scientific evidence on the effects of marriage, and found the evidence strongly supports sticking to these marriage vows (Maggie Gallagher "Why Marriage is Good for You." City Journal ((Autumn, 2000)).
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In summary, this is what they found.
• Marriage lowers the risk of violence. Unmarried couples who live together engage in more domestic violence than the married.
• Married people live healthier and longer lives. Nine out of ten married men who are alive at 48 will make it to age 65, compared with just six in ten of single men.
• Children live healthier and longer lives. A parent's divorce can lessen by four years an adult child's life.
• The married earn more money. Married men make as much as 40 percent more money than unmarried men.
• The married manage money better and build more assets than those who cohabitate. Near retirement, the average married couple is worth about $410,000, compared with $154,000 for the divorced and $167,000 for the never-married.
• The married are more faithful to each other. “Cohabiting men are four times more likely to cheat than husbands, and cohabiting women are eight times more likely to cheat than wives.”
• Marriage is better for you mentally and emotionally. The married are less depressed, anxious, and psychologically stressed.
• The married are happier. “Overall, 40 percent of married people, compared with about a quarter of singles or cohabitors, say they are ‘very happy’ with life in general. We shouldn’t say, ‘divorce or be unhappy’ but ‘divorce and be unhappy.’”
• Children love their married parents more. “Adult children of divorce describe relationships with both their mother and their father less positively, on average, and they are about 40 percent less likely than adults from intact marriages to say they see either parent at least several times a week.”
• The married have better and more frequent sex. “Single men are 20 times more likely, and single women ten times more likely, not to have had sex even once in the past year than the married.”

Maggie asks, “How can a piece of paper work such miracles? For surprisingly, the piece of paper, and not just the personal relationship, matters a great deal…Something about marriage as a social institution—a shared aspiration and a public, legal vow—gives wedlock the power to change individuals' lives.”

Furthermore, she writes, “What proportion of unhappily married couples who stick it out stay miserable? The latest data show that within five years, just 12 percent of very unhappily married couples who stick it out are still unhappy; 70 percent of the unhappiest couples now describe their marriage as ‘very’ or ‘quite’ happy. Just as good marriages go bad, bad marriages go good. And they have a better chance of doing so in a society that recognizes the value of marriage than one that sings the statistically dubious joys of divorce.”

Deuteronomy 23:23 says, “Make sure you do what you said you would do in your vow” (GW). Now we understand why!